On Sunday afternoon Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny fell through a roof and into the world of Federico Laboureau, a South L.A. restaurateur who sells empanadas, choripan and milanesa — and who also designed a central set piece for the historic Super Bowl halftime show.
Laboureau can most often be found in his Argentinian restaurant, Fuegos LA, which he operates with his partner in love and business, Maximilian Pizzi. But with years of experience in production design and fashion, he recently found himself dreaming up the inside of Bad Bunny’s casita, a set piece previously seen only from the exterior during the Grammy Award-winning rapper and singer’s “No Me Quiero Ir De Aqui” residency in Puerto Rico.
During the Super Bowl halftime show, the casita made an appearance again, and this time, the world would see its interior for the first time.
“I was like, ‘This is amazing,’” Laboureau said.
Though not a football fan — he’d been raised on Argentinian fútbol instead — he viewed the job as symbolic, an emblem of the Latin community standing together in a climate of fear marked by national immigration raids and deportations.
“For a Latino — or I think for everyone — a casita means a temple where you get together with your family, with your friend, where love happens,” he said. “It’s not about the actual set, but being part of a huge event and showing Latinos we are here, we are not going anywhere. We are massive. We are happiness, we are passion and we are community.”
The performance also spotlighted another L.A. restaurateur: Villa’s Tacos’ Victor Villa, who danced behind a plancha on the field.
A friend in production had reached out to Laboureau in December, inquiring whether he might be interested in participating in a top-secret project. He signed a small pile of paperwork, then learned what his job would entail: designing the inside of the staged casita belonging to Bad Bunny, or Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio.
They presented Laboureau with “a white canvas box”: a 20-by-20-foot set featuring three windows and two doors. They constructed the faux casita at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall, minutes from the restaurant.
The restaurateur envisioned a boilerplate abuelita’s house, which could represent Bad Bunny’s, or his, or anyone’s. As someone raised by his grandmother, Laboureau saw the experience as a way to remember and reconnect to his own heritage and fill the space with “little comfy details” like porcelain figurines and plastic flowers. Wanting the knickknacks to look appropriately aged, he and his team scoured flea markets and thrift stores in addition to prop houses.
Bad Bunny pretaped the segment inside the casita, faux-falling through the roof and quite literally crashing a family gathering before exiting to the remainder of the performance.
Laboureau and Pizzi met in Argentina nearly 17 years ago, with Laboureau working in fashion and Pizzi in the events industry. They relocated to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles 12 years ago after shifting career focus toward entertainment production. While here they’ve created for Disney and Amazon, among others, and bought a house and became citizens.
But the film industry ground to a halt during the pandemic and industry strikes. Laboureau and Pizzi needed to pivot, and as lifelong food obsessives, they launched their own company — without having any experience as chefs.
They began Fuegos LA humbly, hand-making empanadas in their home kitchen and freezing them, then selling to friends. With word-of-mouth success, they rented a commercial kitchen three months later, which allowed them to expand via delivery platforms.
“We started the business with two pesos, with nothing,” Laboureau said. “We’d sell two empanadas and then with that money, invest in fliers. We’d sell another empanada, we’d buy packaging. Literally it was like that.”
Pop-ups and delivery improved their business, but with growing interest, they needed a permanent space. They found a location in a South L.A. strip mall, took hospitality classes and expanded the menu with Argentinian stalwarts — and some of them tinged by the international flavors of the couple’s travels. Now they source their meats from Argentina and their produce from local farmers markets.
They also use their storefront as a cultural hub, offering tango nights, a community farmers market, live jazz and storytelling supper clubs. They began expanding their business to other storefronts within the strip mall; later this month, they plan to unveil a new dining room along with Argentine pizzas.
Fuegos LA’s success has been gradually building beyond their dreams, but given immigration sweeps and a climate of fear, Laboureau said that some days he feels like his “American dream is an American nightmare.”
But Pizzi and Laboureau run their business with an ethos similar to Bad Bunny’s love-conquers-hate message from the Super Bowl and Grammy speech: Everything tastes better with love. Love, he said, is Fuegos LA’s “main recipe,” and a guiding light during a tumultuous time for Latin communities in the U.S.
“I have my American passport, but it’s challenging, what my community is going through,” Laboureau said. “In a moment when our president is declaring the official language is English, having the main show of the Super Bowl where somebody’s singing in Spanish is something historical. It was being part of something very powerful for my community.”
While Laboureau brought empanadas to Bad Bunny’s dressing room, he’s unsure if the megastar had a chance to try them. But Benito — along with all Angelenos — has an open invitation to try them at Fuegos LA.
Fuegos LA is located at 3957 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles, and is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
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